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Paper short abstract:

In the US there is a growing gap between the race/ethnicity/economic class/family educational attainment backgrounds of teachers and of the students they teach. This paper reviews how shared backgrounds and/or overt efforts to value different backgrounds from one's own matter for student success

Paper long abstract:

Using student and teacher demographic data from the US states of Nebraska and Kansas (the implementation sites for a multifaceted teacher diversification and support initiative) as one grounding and a review of anthropology of education research (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1993) on the other, this paper lays out why efforts to diversify who goes into teaching and changing teacher preparation strategies are both likely to support greater student educational achievement, particularly achievement by students from backgrounds that historically have been poorly served by US schools. Returning to Erickson's (1987) use of Vygotsky to reconcile assertions by those (e.g., Heath [1983]) who noted cultural mismatch between teacher and learner as a prospective source of educational challenge and cultural ecology proponents (notably Ogbu and Fordham), the paper notes the long tradition in the anthropology of education for considering patterns of exclusion and academic struggle by students of various backgrounds. Understanding the whys and hows of these struggles sets up a consideration of how changed teacher recruitment and changed teacher preparation can both be harnessed to change the orientations, strategies, and skills of the teachers who work in classrooms where most/all students are from minoritized backgrounds and too often are expected to struggle. The paper also considers how 'grow your own' initiatives (another label that applies in project sites) can help districts find new teachers who are more likely to be attracted to the district where they used to be a student, more likely to succeed, and more likely to stay.